By PJR Peaches

“Honey,” she said as she pointed for Syed to pull over on the suburban road lined with old elm and pine trees. “We should at least look at it, I know it’s out of our price range but the realtor really is pushing it on us. Says she can picture us here. Says it’s perfect for us”

“Okay I know, but, the realtor, what’s her name again―”

“It’s Sue, Syed, you should know that, we’ve spoken with her too many times by now…”

“Alright, alright Maggie, Sue says that about every house that we’ve looked at. I don’t know if she actually knows what we want or if she’s just pushing anything to make a profit.”

“I like her, she’s upbeat, I think. And really, we don’t know this area, she’s our only option.”

Syed looked at his fiancé. Maggie’s eyes glowed like dark fire in the evening sunset. “I just want where we move to be the best thing for us,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s the most perfect place or not, it just has to be perfect for you and me.”

“Oh, honey,” Maggie said, and she squeezed his arm as he put the car in park and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

“Where is it?” Syed asked, getting out of the car. I just see trees up and down the whole block. Some craftsmen homes and colonials down there but…”

“It looks like it’s up these steps,” Maggie said, looking up from her phone and turning to face stone steps that jutted out of a high hill. The hill arched upwards about fifteen feet and was rooted with thick yellow grass that grew tall. Above it the trees stood like tall ancient guardsmen,
staring down at the couple in the golden autumn sunset.

“Come on, Syed,” Maggie said as she bounced up the steps, “we are already late, there might be other couples here today―Sue said this is a great neighborhood and it’s an open house.”

Syed was stuck staring up at the trees as their silhouettes were entombed into blackness and the dying golden light sunk deeper into the throat of twilight.

He inched up the stairs, slowly moving up, the beers over the years weighing heavily on his knee joints as the stone steps, littered with leaves and dead twigs, brought him higher into the hill where the house supposedly was. With the dying light, he brought his eyes
down upon the colorful leaves lying like corpses on the path, where he noticed a large black leaf.
He lifted his foot to step on it―

“Be careful, Maggie called down from above, “there’s a bit of a gap.”

Syed looked down and saw that this black leaf was by no means a leaf, but the beginning sliver of a crevice hewed into the stone steps. He quickly stepped down onto where he was certain there was a solid step, and the stone jiggled just slightly. Syed almost lost his footing and began to tip backwards but instead he shifted his weight upwards and then caught himself on his hands, leaning forward, his eyes staring deep down into the fissure in the center of the stone staircase.

There was nothingness in the crack. Blank nothingness deep down to the core of the earth, and it was right there in between his hands.
“Honey I don’t know if we…” he began to say, his voice echoing in the deep black. He then lifted himself up and carefully climbed the steps, avoiding the split, and coming to the crest of the hill where Maggie waited for him.

She was on the left side of the crevice, which had started small on the staircase and continued up the fifteen stairs to the top of the hill. The cement path the staircase connected to was swept very carefully, but no broom could sweep away the gash, the laceration, the open
wound of the earth which continued and intensified along the path up to the house that was before them. The crack continued up through the dead center of the house and split the home in two. The two parts limped and slouched inwardly towards each other where the crevice broke it
apart. The lights in the five-bedroom-three-bathroom-modern-colonial were all on and softly illuminated the blackness that tore through the crevice below it. There was some smooth Chet Baker playing from inside the home and the smell of freshly baked cookies wafted in through the
autumn air, over the scent of dead leaves and the sound of distantly cooing mourning doves.

“Should we call the fire department? This can’t be,” Syed started, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Maggie was in complete shock. She stood on the left side of the split and stared in. “This can’t be right…” she started, “Sue was supposed to be here. She said it was okay that we were late. Let’s see if she’s inside.”

“Honey?” Syed said with a question. “You see the crevice in the middle of this broken house, right?”

“Oh don’t be so negative. Sue said there are already a few offers. I mean look how wonderful it was once,” she said and steamed forward along the crevice towards the red door which still hung in one piece in the broken door frame.

“Maggie, Syed! There you are,” Syed heard the voice of their realtor, and the red door swung open as their six-foot-eight realtor stepped out carefully from the door frame. The giantess wore a blue pants-suit. She had long, painted nails and her hair was in a short bob. Syed could never tell if she was thirty or sixty, the way she wore her hair and overcaked her makeup. Her voice was like sunlight on blinding white snow.

“What is this place?” Syed asked

“Oh, Mr. Negative! There he is, don’t say no to what you don’t know, not yet anyway. Please, you have to come in.” Sue spoke loudly, triumphantly and then looked out across the trees like there might be spies amidst the dead leaves. Syed and Maggie inched towards her.

Sue spoke in a whisper-shout, “now Doug is in there. My rival… you know how that goes. He might try to sell it to his clients but he’s got it all wrong, and honestly, they don’t deserve this house like you two do.” She nodded her head like she really believed the gospel of her words. “BUT,” she said at loud, normal volume, “I believe in you, and you believe in Sue!
Don’t you!? Now let’s get in there and see your house!”

“Maggie, you can’t be seriou―”

“Syed, come on. I know it looks bad from out here, but, let’s at least check out the inside. Maybe it’s better on the inside.” Maggie turned and followed Sue, stepping carefully inside the split door frame, dirt falling down into black void below.

“What?” his mouth mimicked the crevice below them, and he followed his fiancé in, carefully stepping through the cracked door frame, placing his foot carefully on the left side of the crack, on sturdy wooden floors and pulled himself in.

Inside, the vast central hall was made from stunning white marble that, aside from the contiguous crack through the center of the floor and ceiling, mirrored every sound and vision in gleaming white.

“Wow,” Maggie said, her eyes sparkling with the brightness of the room.

“Wow is right,” Syed said, his eyes transfixed, looking up at a golden, crystal chandelier that hung above them. The crack continued there as well, circling around to the left of the canopy of the light-piece, where it had somehow stayed firmly planted into the white ceiling.

“Wow is TRIPLE right,” Sue said, her voice like a bee buzzing in the ear. “I mean where else might you get such stunning stonework for this price?”

“What is the price?” Syed asked, eyeing the black crevice that grinned down at him from the ceiling.

It was odd, but Syed, every time he looked away from the crevice in the floor, walls, and ceiling, almost forgot about it until he looked and saw it lying there, slithering in stillness like the serpent in Eden.

“Pure white,” a voice said, nasally and overzealous.

Syed and Maggie turned to Sue, who rolled her eyes and head in a violent, indelibly aggravated manner. Her head, so high up, rotated at the sound of the voice and the three of them turned to the left, where a small figure with thin, horribly combed hair with a black
toupee walked in. His bronze face reeked of dollar store makeup and he squatted, vulture-like―no, opossum like―into the room of white marble.

“Pure white,” the voice said again, and Syed saw the man’s black, thin little eyes, grizzled like bone meal and tormented like veal, shoot outward from his ruffled, flapping face.

Those eyes speared into Syed with a quiet yet overwhelming little hatred, like a mosquito and a wasp stinging him simultaneously.

“Hello, Doug, this is the other couple looking at the house, Syed and Maggie,” Sue said curtly and kindly as a mother reminding her rude son to be human.

“Pure white marble… From the Dakotas, a fine place, I have been there before. You know they loved me, they said , ‘we’d never met someone we liked so much,’ they told me that. Pure white marble, it’s better nowhere else,” As Doug waddled in, his overly-long tie rocked back and forth while his head hunched over his large belly, Syed realized this man’s head only
reached Sue’s waist, and his ferocity was solely posturing alone. He smelled like vinegar and stale bread. “We just have to make sure the right people get it―I always make sure the right people get what they deserve.”

“This house has a giant crevice running down the middle of it. Who, in your book, would deserve that?” Syed asked.

Maggie gave him a harsh, dark look. “Excuse us,” she said and she pulled her fiancé away from the two realtors.

“Syed, you’re being rude,” Maggie scolded him softly.

Syed was apoplectic. “So is he…pure white bullshit, what do you think that was about? What’s gotten to you today? You always have my back.”

“I just want what we deserve. We’ve come so far, this is the house that everyone has been talking about, all of my friends love this neighborhood. I just don’t want to mess it up by saying the wrong thing in front of the realtors. Do you understand, Syed?”

Syed looked at this beautiful woman, the woman of his future; his life. “Okay. But you have to let me defend myself. I think they’re coming after me―or you, honey.”

“Okay, fine… But let’s be polite…There is something magical about this place. Did you see the marble? From the Dakotas…”

“They don’t have marble in the Dakotas, Maggie, he is full of shit.”

“Hey, what did you say about being polite?”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get back to Sue.”

The couple turned around to Sue and Doug, only to realize that Doug had continued to talk to the room, not facing either them nor Sue, “And I said, you know what I said, ‘it’s MARBLE-ous here,’ do you see that? A great joke, I have too many great jokes―jokes, you know, they’re hard to come by, come and go, and I said that, ‘you know what, jokes, they only
make people’s lives better they―’”

“Sue,” Maggie said to the giant woman, who had been staring there in silence for the entirety of Doug’s ramblings, “let’s see the rest of the house.”

“Oh, of course,” and Sue led them away from the center hall and Doug and into the kitchen where his ramblings softened from the distance.

“You know, I didn’t like at all what he meant by that pure white, comment,” Sue whispered to Syed as they walked into the giant kitchen with cherry wood cabinets and hand-cut Italian clay tiles.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Syed asked.

“Well, you know,” Sue shrugged, “it’s not quite polite to interrupt him. I had something planned though… he is certainly going to get a stern email from me later…”

“Right,” Syed said, watching as Maggie went speechless over the kitchen. “What do you think you’ll complain about? I would love to be CC’d on that.”

“Oh,” Sue said, without certainty, “what did he say again?”

“He said ‘Pure white’ repeatedly and gave me a dark stare. I didn’t feel very safe.”

“What do you mean by dark?” Sue said nervously and looked Syed up and down. “And, can you really fault a man for saying a color over and over again? It is pure white in the center hall, after all.”

“So, are you emailing him or not? You brought it up. It sounds like maybe you―”

“Would you really like me to?” Sue asked. “Oh, anyhow, look at this kitchen.” She waltzed away from Syed and over to Maggie who was ogling at the deep country sink and the hand carved backsplash of a cherub downing a bottle of wine.

“Wait, that’s not a cherub drinking wine, that’s a…I think it’s a really horrible
image of Betsy Ross sewing the American flag…A little preachy for me.”

“What are you saying, Syed? Oh it’s hand carved art… It’s a true expression, very…patriotic. I like that sort of thing though…what other kitchen has this level of art?” Sue corrected Syed, turning the faucet on to show the solid, powerful stream erupting from the faucet.

“Syed, it’s art is all,” Maggie said. “It’s creative.”

“I don’t know what it is, but it is certainly original,” said Sue.

“It looks like a little much is all. It looks like a hobgoblin making a flag. Maggie, you can’t be serious, you want this thing in your home?”

Syed trailed off as he heard the approaching footsteps of a small group enter the kitchen. Doug was leading another couple into the room. They were pastier than glue sticks and resembled two half empty salt shakers.

“And look here, that crack, you shouldn’t worry about that crack, it isn’t even going to affect you, trust me, believe me, I know what I’m talking about; you ever see the Grand Canyon? Talk about a crack, I said, ‘holy moly what a crack, I can’t believe it,’ they said, ‘yes the county’s largest,’ I said, ‘that ain’t a crack that’s a…a…a big nothing below the ground that’s
what that is,’ they said, ‘no, Doug, that’s the Grand Canyon,’ believe me, you have nothing to worry about.” The realtor went on and on as his own clients followed him proudly.

“Talk about a hobgoblin,” Syed said, eyeing the short, squat crescent-roll shaped man fixing his toupee.

“Hobgobby? I’ll say what?” Doug replied, his furrowed face almost disappearing in a deeper scowl. “That couple over there is a hobbygobby, they are useless, you can tell, useless… they won’t buy a great house like this. They aren’t great, they’re useless, useless, useless, not able to be used. That’s what I say, they say, ‘look at the crack, ah, bah,’ ‘boo-hoo,’ I
said, and they don’t deserve it, they really don’t.”

Syed tried to keep his gaze of hatred, but he had never seen more blindly
contented people in his life. They both aimlessly nodded as Doug showered them in verbal waste.

“Well,” the male said, overly interested in Doug, “if you say that crack won’t
harm us… I trust you.” His wife seemed to confirm the statement with a nod as she toured the marvelous kitchen.

Sue, overhearing the interaction, eyed Syed, her eyes, through her thick makeup, showed a jealous wish that Syed might trust her half as much as that pale couple seemed to trust Doug. She locked eyes with Syed and mouthed, “I hate to say this, but he’s right you can’t even see the crack from the kitchen. Only hardly. But that Doug―he’s not even good!”

“Let’s move on, people, give Doug his fair space,” Sue said, still not even
mentioning the crevice that rotted the center of the house, nor her male counterpart’s rudeness and loudness.

“But we just got here, can’t Doug find another room?”

Maggie glared at Syed, “What has gotten into you?” she said.

“No, what has gotten into you? You suddenly lack all logic and cohesion, you keep forgetting there is a giant crack in the―”

“Shush,” Sue said sternly, she shook her head reproachfully at the couple. She walked over with two giant steps, grabbed the couple by the arms and moved them into the next hallway, away from the kitchen and Doug’s glue-stick couple.

Her eyes were dark blue, like the polluted, starless night sky. “If we don’t keep cool, if we show our infighting, we will never get you this house,” she said. “Even if you want to stick it to Doug, or buy the house―which I really think, truly, is an incredible purchase―the two can be
mutually exclusive―Stick. With. Me.” She pointed at each of them and then back to herself, sternly. Motherly.

Maggie and Syed nodded up at the giantess. They reached out and held each other’s hands, squeezing apologies of unison. Syed looked down, and even in the dimly lit hallway, he saw the sparkle of Maggie’s silver engagement ring and he looked into her hazel eyes.

“Fuck Doug,” he said. He kissed Maggie on the cheek.

“Fuck Doug,” she said back and squeezed his hand.

Syed looked back at Sue who smiled. She moved her head and the group went back into the kitchen. He needed to get back into that room. To yell at the man, to prove he was useful had a purpose, and that purpose was buying this damn house with Sue as their realtor, their leader.

Doug’s sonorous weaseling voice, which was pulled out in a nasally fashion, was berating his dead-faced white and pasty couple with constant sound.

“Phenomenal marble, I said, ‘look at this marble, its pure, pure marble, my car is made of of this marble you know,’ they said, ‘look at this marble’ and I said ‘that’s great marble,’ and they said, ‘yeah but did you look at the pine and cherrywood cabinets,’ I said, ‘the cabinets, I thought they were made from angels, angels’ I said, can you believe that? And they don’t do that for anybody, you know, it’s a great house, and those people… you know those people, the other ones in the house, they don’t belong to this house, this is your house, it should be anyway, you gotta take it back, some people say, ‘you know, Doug, you shouldn’t talk about other people that way,’ I said, ‘you know I know my people they’re good people, only they deserve this house,’ and, ‘the others,’ they said, ‘it’s broken you know, split down the middle,’ I said ‘that’s what you’ve done to it,’ we gotta have it so those other people, you know them, they can’t have it, they can’t, they want it so they can tear it down, ‘tear it down,’ they say, yeah I know, you can’t believe it, but they want it to break it down, I said, ‘can you believe that?’”

The couple just stood there and nodded, occasionally voicing their agreement.

As Doug spoke, his mouth got tighter and tighter and his forehead wrinkled and crinkled more and more into a furrow like the trenches of the first world war. His hunch seemed to angle more and more down, his spine bending forward into a ‘C’ as his paunch seemed to rise further
and further into the air, his shabby tie elongating almost to the floor. His tongue spattered constantly, and as Sue entered the room with her giant steps, she patted Syed and Maggie on the backs.

“We are buying this house,” Syed said.

Maggie lifted her chin, “We sure as hell are, we are taking back this place, this whole neighborhood, crack or not.”

Doug didn’t quite stop talking; he just started to move his body to look at Maggie and Syed with black, angry eyes.

Sue said nothing from behind.

The pasty white couple glowered at Maggie and Syed.

“Frankly, you don’t deserve this house, you don’t deserve it, everybody agrees, even Sue, I said, ‘Sue, you know these people don’t deserve it, they only focus on the bad stuff,’ you know what she said? She said, nothing, nothing, just like she’s saying now. You―you two are losers.
You don’t deserve this house, you only focus on the crack, there isn’t even a crack, it’s a perfect house, if I were any younger, I’d be buying this house, heck I’d be grabbing the two of you right now and throwing you down the crack―I’d be tossing you outside. Where? Right on your asses.
My people deserve this house, you don’t deserve anything.”

“You can’t talk to us that way.” Maggie spoke with strength, with anger, with vitality. “We want to mend this place, fix what’s broken. I have hope for a place like this. It was beautiful once. Why can’t it be again?”

“You? You can’t make anything great, you’re a mess, you can’t keep your life together, your fiancé? Look at him, for obvious reasons, look at him, you know what they say, I said, ‘look at them they look like they’ve been fighting each other for months, they won’t last a year in marriage,’ they said, ‘look, nobody even likes them, they don’t deserve this beautiful, perfect house.’ And Sue, Sue can’t do anything with this house, it’s a useless listing for her…She’s useless, that’s not me saying that, they all say it, ‘Sue,’ they say, ‘she couldn’t sell this house if they begged her to,’ look at who she dragged in, a hot mess you two. If it were me, if I were
young, I’d say, ‘get em’,’ I’d say and everyone would get em’.”

Syed stepped forward, his mouth opening to defend his fiancé and Sue. Sue, in the echoes of Doug’s cruelty had become the saint of all saints in Syed’s mind. Through Doug’s criticism, the giantess he had hardly known nor liked was the harbinger of perfection.

But he never got to speak.

The pasty couple had gathered anger and the blood of anger and righteousness boiled in their cheeks. Arms raised and fury aroused, the two began to move after Syed and Maggie.

Sue stood there, silent as the mossed-angels of cemetery tombs, as Syed and Maggie stepped back and away from the pale couple of rage.

Syed and Maggie were chased, tripping on antique colonial furniture, and perfect Dakota marble, sliding on rugs hand-crocheted by Cherokee natives, throwing antique book collections of the highest law and authority uselessly at their pursuers as the house divided rested effortlessly over the black void.

Finally, Syed and Maggie ran out the front door, jumping through and over the deep crevice, as Doug chanted in cohesion into the abyss and the pasty couple smiled with pride. And Sue, Sue stood there, with quiet disapproval, at the other realtor.

Back in the car, panting and sweating, the couple looked at one another.

“Maybe we should find a new realtor,” Maggie said.

“Maybe we should find a new house,” Syed said.

Maggie slammed down on the gas pedal and drove out into the dark, polluted, starless night.